From Wikipedia: (bolding mine)
Here’s a link to the .pdf referred to as note 31 int he above: http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/wld/documents/grzzlybear.pdf
which states:
So, if it needs to be stated that it happens rarely, one can infer that grizzly bears do, rarely, hunt humans.
For the record, I wasn’t doubting the traveller’s story as much as musing about whether weeks of solitude may have already done a number on his brains. I can remember seeing clear human faces on trees within 48 hours of intense stress and fatigue outdoors. Weeks of possibly poor diet(living off the land) and fatigue (living off the land, in Alaska) could easily make someone jumpy and maybe a little paranoid.
And it could also draw the attention of That Bear; the one the other bears talk about in revolted, hushed whispers, with the odd gustatorial proclivities; the one with a taste for “concrete meat.”
Ah, yes, the bear with a taste for Longpig. I believe I’ve heard the whispered rumours.
I honestly don’t know how much I’d like solitude. I do know that it is a constant source of irritation for me that every friggin’ place I go, there’s people there. Take a hike in the mountains? People. Go to a lake? People. That was one of the best parts of our trip to the Northwest Territories last summer - there were hardly any people there. There’s a difference between “not many people” and “no people at all,” though, and I do recognize that.
Or even a single person expressing both. Case in point (at least according to my recollection): Jack Kerouac’s time in isolation as a forest ranger at the end of the semi-autobiographical Dharma Bums was written as if it were all unicorns farting cherry pies. But, as continued in Big Sur, we find that wasn’t the case at all. In fact, he ultimately suffered a nervous breakdown – I always viewed his time in isolation as a contributing factor, even if it wasn’t the primary (or secondary, or…) reason.
Yow. Haven’t thought about Kerouac’s writings in a long, long time…
I couldn’t live alone in the wildernessbut this guy did I’ve watched parts of the video on PBS several times.
Same here. I am a very introverted person, so I don’t think I would have any psychological problem going a week without human contact. But I know from experience that I get really scared of the dark. Back in college I worked as a camp counselor in the San Gabriel mountains. One weekend with no campers, all the staff decided to go down the mountain for some fun in the town below, but I stayed behind because I was tired and not feeling well. Let me tell you, just crossing the hundred feet in the dark from the main building to the showers was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I was sure a bear was about to eat me at any moment.
In an old back issue of National Geographic* I once read about a researcher who spent six months alone in a cave to investigate what effects isolation would have on a person.
I can’t link to the original article, but I did find another article describing the same experiment:
http://www.jamesmdeem.com/cavestory4.htm
With no sunlight he ended up living on a strange 26-hour schedule, he completely lost track of what month it was, and he ended the experiment with some psychological damage.
*"Look at that old man, he looks just like an ape! Bom bom! Look in that cave, there might be some old bones! Bom bom!
This was interesting. I’m guessing that she didn’t talk to herself? When I lived alone, I talked to myself all the time, and really enjoyed the company. 
I did notice that if I stayed in all weekend, interacting with people again at work on Monday was very strange at first and made me feel like those two days alone had affected my cognition, so I can imagine what I would be like after an extended period alone (and it ain’t pretty).
The odd part is that I have no fear at all of walking outside at night in the city - which is, objectively speaking, orders of magnitude more dangerous.
Also, I knew for a fact no bears were lurking (cabin was on an island lacking bears).
There was no reason whatsoever for the fear. It was completely irrational and instinctual - the absolute lack of any human light, noise or activity outside of the cabin made it feel dangerous, even though it was not.
appetite grows with eating, and vice versa. If you lose internet connection for a long term and don’t actually need it for doing your work during that time, the pain will subside pretty quickly.
How happy or unhappy you would be without human contact would depend on the degree of introversion, and so it would make no sense to make general conclusions about this based on stories of unhappy extroverts. I would imagine that an introverted Finn would handle solitude a lot better than an extroverted African.
I think us city-dwellers aren’t completely aware of how seldom we actually are in the dark in a city. I love it when we go out of town and I can see the stars again, but on a cloudy night or one with no moon, it is awfully damned dark out there.
This. I really enjoy the solitude and the chance to absorb a bit of the wild world at my own pace and timing, but have a constant inner monologue going on the subject of serving as a public reminder on the evening news of how stupid it is to go hiking alone.
…Which is pretty much no comment at all on the OP, come to think of it. I’d love to run away to the woods, but alas waited too long and haven’t been able to pull off a solitary camping trip now that I have stupid grown-up responsibilities and such. I fantasize about it a lot, though 
and wish there was some way to do it safely that would allow me to pick my own trail as I went instead of having to plot it out ahead of time and leave someone with an idea of precisely where I’m headed.
I do go hawking/hiking alone, though. My favorite part about it is the crushing silence, until my brain shifts gears. Then all the sudden it’s all kinds of noisy. I grew up in a very rural farming area and can hardly stand the noise living in (fairly quiet) suburbia. The few times I’ve been in a major city, I feel like I can hardly think for the horrific noise level. I always spend a few days wondering how people possibly can stand it, until I think about how much ambient noise there is in suburbia, compared to poking around in a national forest area.
Definately. I’ve found myself embracing that notion, sometimes planning out even the simple routines lest I become remembered as the guy that died doing something stupid, or maybe even was never found at all. Eventually what enters the equation is trying to determine at what point altering your normal process actually puts you more at risk due to just preoccupation or simple unfamiliarity.
Planning a safe routine really came into play twenty years ago when I was working alone in the Yukon/Charley Wilderness along the Alaska Canada border north of Eagle. A helicopter would ferry me 80 miles north each morning to a rugged, hilly area along the Yukon River. It was a pristine wilderness, no roads, heck even the nearest town, Circle, was probably 30 miles away by air. I had a 12 ga. for bear and would follow a map and compass cutting helicopter LZs through the woods. The potential to screw up royally with the nearest help hours away meant you constantly had to plan accordingly and stay vigilant. A fall or cut or unanticipated accident and you may have completely screwed the proverbial pooch.
This attitude, mind set, was really driven home maybe my second or third day in. I was on a ridgeline and needed to fell a decent sized tree along with smaller brush. Between the wildlife and the big timber there were plenty of hazards to consider. I’d set the gun nearby against a tree and was cutting through a tree larger than my torso when I got this really uneasy feeling I was being watched. I’d shut off the chainsaw and look around, not expecting a human because there probably wasn’t one within 30 miles but really a bear or something. I had visions of having to fight off a griz with a chainsaw on a loose incline, which sounds great for YouTube but was fairly terrifying in real life. Would I just use the saw, go for the gun instead, to hell with either and climb the nearest tree, what? All sorts of scenarios and responses filled my thoughts, probably near to the point of distracting me from the dangerous job at hand. Probably three or four times more I stopped and looked around but couldn’t shake the creepy vibe that potential danger was in need of consideration.
I finally felled it and still looking over my shoulder packed up all my gear right as the chopper arrived to drop off my crew and take me home. Not thirty seconds after pilot Ray and I took off, one of the crew called us on the radio. “Hey, why didn’t you tell us about the bear?” “Err… what bear?” “The griz about fifty yards away just sitting there watching us.”
While I pretty much doubt any bear would be drawn to and attack the noise of a running saw, it did drive home the truth that sometimes when you’re out there by yourself, the potential for a life altering experience is very much real and you’d best watch your ass.
I went on a solo, 105 km backpacking trip through the Canadian Rockies many years ago. It took about a week. I really enjoyed the solitude, but what was really impressed upon me was the degree to which I was at the mercy of the environment, particularly at night.
It was a horrible and rainy season and very few people were in the backcountry. I didn’t see another soul for days on end. So, at night, when I was alone at camp, I knew for a fact that there wasn’t a single person within 15 or 20 km, at least, due to the fact that camps were staged at such distances.
It’s was really scary the first few nights, laying in the tent, halfway up a mountain side. It’s dark out. And I mean DARK. And I was basically this tender, little, party snack waiting for the first bear to stumble upon me. Or smell me from five km away. And, being in a national park, guns aren’t allowed.
So, of course, every rustle and twig snap is a grizzly bear or a cougar, or a marauding band of hobgoblins. It’s pretty scary laying there all alone realizing that you can’t do a damn thing about anything. Completely defenseless.
I accepted it after a few nights and after a while I took to wearing earplugs since the flow of the creeks tended to keep me awake.
Another point comes to mind. I used to work at a very remote gold mine in Northwest British Columbia. This huge area is very sparsely populated and hundreds of raw, wild kilometers lay in every direction.
Access to the mine was only by air, and the flight in was over 300 km of mountainous wilderness. Flights were usually at 17,000 ft and over the mountains, but on one flight the cloud layer was too low and the pilots elected to fly through the mountains, valley to valley.
Anyway, on this flight at one point I noticed a tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere with smoke coming from the chimney. This cabin wasn’t on a river, lake, or road. There were no roads for thousands of square kilometers. Yet, there was some person scratching out some sort of life in the middle of freaking nowhere. I’ve always been blown away by this.